Ordered by the Righteous
by EllieMurasaki
Summary: Four ways Dean didn't go to hell and one way he did.


1) "Offer me money. Power. Everything I ask for."

Dean flicked his eyes away from the tall young man. It looked like he was trying not to laugh. But that was absurd on the face of it—there was, after all, a demon in the room. Possibly two.

"All the kingdoms and their splendor, sonny boy," not-Samuel said with a grin.

The young man's face twisted. "I want my parents back, you son of a bitch." He raised a hand and twisted his fist, and Samuel's skeleton flashed gold, and Samuel fell.

Deanna shrieked.

Dean's mouth opened and closed a few times. "Ever considered piracy?" he finally asked.

The young man threw him a withering look. "Dean," he said, and looked at her and added "Deanna," and how had he learned her name? "I'm sorry."

_later_

"Always put salt in the water," Deanna told Carrie. "It makes the spaghetti taste right."

Carrie nodded wisely.

"Do you know what else salt is good for?" Deanna asked, almost casually.

"Unca Dean puts it in the sugar bowl when he wants to make Daddy mad."

Deanna laughed. "Thirty and thirty-five and they act younger than you." Deanna would be much more at ease if either of her grandsons were ever caught on one of her conversational fishhooks. But Mary was alive, and John's death had had nothing supernatural about it (she'd checked), so whatever had happened must not have happened yet. She hoped she wouldn't live to see it. "Salt chases away bad things," she explained. "Ghosts and demons. They can't touch it and they can't cross a line of it. That's why when you spill salt, you're supposed to throw a pinch over your shoulder, just in case there's a ghost or a demon there."

Mary could yell at Deanna all she liked, later. There would always be evil in the world, and Deanna would be damned if she didn't do her best to make sure everyone with Campbell blood was ready to face it.

2) "You shoot me! You shoot me in the heart, son!"

Sam pulled the trigger. Blue lightning crackled from John's heart. Sam dropped the gun, dropped to his knees between his dead father and his dying brother, and cried.

3) _Bang_. The bullet shattered Jake's left shoulder. _Bang-bang_, both knees. Jake dropped. Dean ran past him and yanked the Colt out of the crypt. Bobby yelled to take cover, and Dean dove behind a tombstone. The crypt burst open and floods of black smoke—demon smoke—spilled out. A devil's gate, Ellen explained when Dean asked, but he had already stopped paying attention: the Colt still had its last bullet.

The Colt flew into the yellow-eyed demon's hand. Sam's gun hit the ground. Dean hit a tombstone.

Sam distracted the demon for a minute or two. Sam, _Sammy_—and Dad, Dad out of hell looking no worse for wear, wrestling the demon out of the guy's body, and Sam glanced at Dean and smiled and tossed the Colt from the guy's hand to Dean's and the moment the demon was back in the guy's body Dean fired.

Bobby and Ellen had the gate dealt with. Good. One less thing for Dean to worry about. Dean nodded at Dad, once, sharply, and pushed himself to his feet. He grabbed Sam's gun on the way past, dropping the Colt where Sam's gun had been.

Sam squatted next to Jake. "Howdy, Jake."

"Wait," Jake said, his voice shaky from pain. "You were dead. I killed you."

"Yeah?" Sam said.

"If you've got any last words, now would be a good time," Dean told Jake. He aimed the gun at Jake's right shoulderblade and fired.

"Just kill me," Jake croaked.

"Like you killed my brother?" Dean asked. He moved the gun to Jake's lower back, pressed the muzzle to the spine right about where Jake had stabbed Sam, then moved it over an inch and fired. "I want you to die slow," Dean told him. Two inches the other way and he fired again. "Nobody fucks with my family."

Ellen put a hand on Dean's shoulder. "Ellen, give Jo a kiss for me, all right?" Dean told her without moving.

"He wouldn't want you to do this," Ellen said.

"Do you see him expressing an opinion?" Dean retorted. He glanced around, found Bobby, and threw the Impala's keys at him. They clattered off a tombstone. Dean headed over to the Impala and yanked open the door, pulling out the bundle on the back seat, cradling it as carefully as if he were four and it was Sam a few months old, the first time he'd been trusted to hold his brother. Back to Jake, then back to the Impala for a bag of salt and the gas can and a lighter.

Dean looked up at Sam, still sitting next to Jake, and down at Sam, and moved the sheet off his face. He threw handfuls of salt over Jake and over Sam, then gas over all three of them, and toyed with the lighter. He curled his fingers over Sam's cold still hand, and Sam's cold insubstantial hand wrapped around his wrist, and they watched Jake die.

Dean maneuvered the gun into his hand and Sam's, trickier than it sounded, and with his other hand flicked on the lighter and held it up. He cocked the gun.

One bullet left in Sam's clip, and fire was a damn painful way to die.

4) "Drop the weapon," Morgan ordered, his gun aimed squarely at the unsub's back.

The unsub turned, knife never leaving Carla Jackson's neck. His expression was stony, he didn't even seem to notice Carla's blood on his face and hands, but when he saw Morgan—when he caught sight of Morgan's gun—for a moment, his whole demeanor changed, and if Morgan had to put a name to the emotion on the unsub's face, he'd call it...joy.

That was in June. Just another case. One more person shattering under stress (related, presumably, to someone in Stanford's class of 2006, because that was the one thing all the victims had in common) and committing suicide by cop.

In August, two young men walked up to Morgan in the supermarket. "I wanted to thank you," the taller one said.

"For what?" Morgan asked.

"My brother died in May," he answered. "I went a little crazy. And in June, you stopped me."

"We owe you one," his friend added. The first one gave Morgan a folded piece of paper, and they both disappeared around the corner. Morgan opened the note and stared: a pentagram inside a circle, with other odd symbols between the star's points, exactly like what Sam Winchester had carved into every one of his victims.

A scream from the next aisle. Morgan rounded the shelves: both men were unconscious on the floor. Later, neither would admit to ever having seen Winchester's symbol, or even to having heard of the Winchesters.

5) "A get-out-of-hell-free Monopoly card? Is this all a _joke _to you?"

_later_

"Holy shit that actually worked."

(note: the card is real; check it out at goohf dot com)


End file.
